Arsenal, BVB Squeak Out Wins; PSG Demolish Dynamo Kiev

Kickoff is at 2:45 p.m. ET, 8:45 p.m. local time from Karaiskaki Stadium in Athens. You can catch the game on DirecTV Soccer in the U.S. on the Sky Sports Red Button in the U.K., and on Sportsnet World Plus in Canada.

You can find coverage of all of the games in our UEFA Champions League Tuesday StoryStream. For more on the entire world of soccer, follow @SBNationSoccer on twitter.

With Paris Saint-Germain as Group A’s only powerhouse, two other teams will have every hope of qualifying for the knockout stages of the UEFA Champions League. As a result, every game in the group stages is meaningful, a refreshing change for those used to them being a procession for the two obvious favourites.

And so that means that Dinamo Zagreb vs. FC Porto should actually be fairly good. Porto, if you’ll recall, have just lost Hulk to Zenit St. Petersburg, which will give their Croatian hosts some hope of earning a decent result. Porto, meanwhile, can reasonably expect a win if they go for it in Zagreb, and with plenty of incentive for both sides to attack, we should actually get a reasonably good game.

In order to do so they’ll need to qualify from Group A and make some serious waves in the knockout rounds. Fortunately for PSG, they’ve got what looks like a fairly easy ride. Dynamo Kiev are their first opponents, and with Porto and Dinamo Zagreb rounding out the group stage matches there’s a notable lack of big names to derail them here.

Expect Parisian attacking power to be thrown at a packed Dynamo defence. Should be a fun one, especially if they can get Ibrahimovic firing on all cylinders.

Raise your hand if, a year ago, you thought that Montpellier would be playing Champions League football this season. No hands? Ok. Raise your hand if you think that Montpellier can do anything in Europe this season. Right, no hands again. Notice a trend? Ok, I’m not going to try to argue that their thing is defying probability, because that would be one of the most phenomenally stupid things I could possibly say. But it is entirely possible that there’s something about Montpellier that we don’t understand.

I think I’m talking about John Utaka, who is magical. How do I know that? Simple. Just go to his website and look at the photos. You’ll thank me for it later.

Real Madrid vs. Manchester City isn’t the sort of match that’s supposed to kick off Group D of the UEFA Champions League. It looks like a particularly delicious quarterfinal tie, the sort you get when the group winners start meeting each other for the first time. But nope. Instead the defending champions for the two strongest leagues on the planet will be facing off in the group stages, and although you’d still expect both to emerge from the Group of Death (TM), any slipups here will be very, very painful.

In the main, that means that the pressure is on Real Madrid to stop being so awful. They’re the home side and they’re also the better team, so they should be able to come away with three points. Any fewer, and they’re suddenly looking at some major problems, because Borussia Dortmund are a good enough team to punish any slip from either of the two giants. And Madrid have made a habit of dropping points this season -- their return from four matches in La Liga this year has been a win, a draw, and two straight losses.

“Vito is very close, and he gets another opportunity now,” said Wenger. “He has belief and he has the mental strength to deal with that.”

Wenger also spoke about their French opponents Montpellier, who have lost three of their first five games in Ligue 1. “What they did is a miracle because I think three years ago they were in the second division and one point away from relegation to division three.